


Vortex

by skepticseptic



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: M/M, Shadow people, setting based on rolling hills asylum episode, shane's shadow seperates in the vortex room and tries to become him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-04-28 21:31:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14458164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skepticseptic/pseuds/skepticseptic
Summary: Shadows stretch across the wall,moving, breathing, on their own,forms spreading down the hall,and take one’s place as a clone.





	Vortex

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to Buck, Levy, Soph, and Brandy for encouraging this and giving ideas for it!

                Shane wandered down what Ryan was calling the “shadow hallway” towards the vortex room, occasionally walking into one of the other rooms that branched off of the hallway. Some of them were just the run of the mill empty rooms, a couple still had metal bedframes with the bottom filled in with plywood, while others held a lot of items that just didn’t seem to belong together. Shane found himself walking into one of those kind of rooms: it was fairly large, it’s walls made out of uncovered concrete blocks that were painted solid white. Between two old windows on the far side of the room, a set of wooden shelves sat, each one filled with dolls. The aged lace curtains that hung on either side of the windows were blown across some of the dolls from the wind that whipped through the cracks around the glass. He took a moment to direct the camera at them, wandering closer and talking to them for a little bit before exiting the room.

                Ahead of him, the door to the vortex room stood wide open, his flashlight reflecting off of the glossy plaque bolted into the wall next to it. He took a moment to glance over some of the information on the plaque: “Paranormal Activity includes disembodied voices, the feeling of being watched, unusual temperature differences, high EMF spikes, flashes of light, good for […] activity, dowsing rods, and EVPs.” The rest of the plaque was explaining why it was now called the vortex room, and Shane briefly skimmed through it before walking into the room. Almost immediately, the blinking of his camera shut off. He sighed heavily through his nose, he really should’ve checked the batteries before they did this. Shane shrugged to himself and scanned the room with his flashlight. A desk stood against one of the walls, some weird thing sitting on top of it, a pair of wooden chairs in the corner, and a grey cushioned chair and a table sitting in front of it with a tea set laid out, along with a vase of white flowers were the only noteworthy features. Shane meandered over to one of the wooden chairs and flipped his flashlight off once he sat down.

                Ryan had sent him in without the spirit box, much to his relief, so he just began to talk to and taunt the darkness. Before long, Ryan was calling down the hallway that his time was up, and that he could start coming back. Shane flicked his flashlight back on, and left the room, his footsteps echoing down the hallway. He didn’t realize, however, that he had left a bit of himself in that room. A part of his shadow was left behind, still stuck to the dusty floor as if Shane himself was standing in the room. Slowly, the shadow began to stretch upwards into bubbling spires, building onto itself and becoming more human shaped. More specifically, _Shane_ shaped. Its chest began to move as if it were breathing, blinking its eyes as if it were seeing, _smiling as if it were feeling_. And it was. “Shane” most definitely was feeling something, although what it was exactly, it couldn’t place.

                The sound of footsteps and a shaky voice echoed down the hallway towards the living shadow and it compressed its shape to fit under the cushioned chair, not wanting to be found out yet. It recognized the voice trickling down the hallway as Ryan, and suddenly the things that it was feeling clicked into place. It felt the urge to protect Ryan from whatever made his voice shake, and to show him all the love in the world that it could manage. The vortex had taken the strongest emotions that Shane was feeling when he entered the room and warped them into itself.

                Ryan entered the room, sweeping his flashlight across the walls. “Shane” huddled further under the chair, praying that Ryan wouldn’t notice it yet. When he had sat down without sparing it a second glance, it let out a tiny whoosh of breath and stiffened when Ryan started talking.

                “I’m think that was the wind, but it sure sounded like a voice. Anyway, this is a spirit box, this will help me speak to you.” Ryan set the spirit box down on the table in front of him, carefully avoiding touching any of the tea set spread out on top of it. He turned it on, and the channels began to steadily flip through static.

                “I’m very scared right now, I’m sorry… are you scared too?” Ryan asked it. Slowly, ‘Shane’ reached a shadowy tendril out from below the chair, snaking it out towards the table and up one of the legs, connecting it with the shadow cast by the spirit box from hanging slightly over the side of the table. It’s first attempt to speak through it just resulted in a garbled noise, but it tried again. This time, “…a little…” came out, cobbled together from the voices of multiple things.

                “A little?” It tried to talk more but couldn’t find the right sounds fast enough and another messed up noise came from the box. Ryan continued on to a different question, “Roy, are you here right now?”

                “No.” That one was an easy enough sound to find thankfully, and it came out in a slightly higher tone than the last one. It cringed a little as the static channels got almost unbearably louder and more distorted before returning back to the normal white noise.

                “No? Then who is it?” Ryan asked shakily. It wasn’t often that a full-on conversation would occur, with something answering him back more than a time or two, and he was scared out of his mind but amped at the same time.

                “No one.” ‘Shane’ decided to be cheeky, he wanted to mess around with Ryan a bit and really give him a run for his money before leaving.

                “No one? Hah, okay, you wanna play games?” Ryan was now directly challenging whatever he thought was responding to him, and ‘Shane’ was a bit surprised. Usually it was actual Shane that’d be teasing and taunting, but from what he could tell, it looked like Shane had rubbed off on Ryan a bit.

                “Sure.” ‘Shane’ wanted to keep upping the ante but he had to go if he wanted to enact his plan. He retracted the tendril steadily, unlooping it from behind the leg of the table and inching it slowly across the floor back to the chair. A moment of panic filled him when Ryan looked away from the spirit box for a moment, and he was sure he had been caught, but Ryan went back to addressing the box with another question.

                ‘Shane’ didn’t stick around to answer any more of them, and he let the spirit box return to it’s normal static. Carefully, he slunk out from under the chair, keeping to the edges of the room and creeping out into the hallway. Once he was out of sight, he quickly made his way to where the actual living Shane was. He only had a limited time to put his plan into action, and he had to do it _now_. He moved behind the couch Shane was waiting on and built himself back up into human shape. ‘Shane’ wrapped a shadowy hand around Shane’s mouth and effectively knocked him out for the time being with what supernatural abilities he had. When Shane had slumped forward, he hauled him off of the couch and drug him down a hallway that branched off from the room, depositing him into a desolate room and closing the door behind him. He fully took on Shane’s appearance before going back out and calling out to Ryan that time was up.

                It wasn’t long before Ryan came trotting back down the hallway, looking rattled from what ‘Shane’ assumed was their little spirit box conversation. Ryan flicked his light off as he got closer, as Shane’s was already on. They had a brief little conversation about the stuff they’d found before gathering the cameras and tripods up, moving to film in another area. Ryan kept looking over at him weird from time to time, and Shane was panicking a little bit internally. They managed to make it through a couple more shots before Shane looked down and noticed that he’d been around the light too long, and his hands were fading out of view. Almost in slow motion, he watched Ryan look over to him again, and he saw Ryan’s eyes widen for just a moment before everything went dark. Shane had turned out his flashlight.

                “Please turn your light on Shane.” Ryan’s voice shook as he pleaded and Shane slunk farther away from him while still remaining in the room. He didn’t want to up and abandon Ryan, not in this place; he loved him too much for that.

                “No.” He should’ve been more careful, he should’ve paid more attention, _he should’ve-_

                “Please?” Shane couldn’t fight Ryan’s softly voiced request and he sighed before he flicked his light back on, wincing as he heard Ryan gasp. The light didn’t stop at his figure to cast a shadow; instead, it went straight through him. The more light that touched him, the more faded out he appeared. The center of his chest, where he’d directed his flashlight before turning it back on, was completely see through, a gaping hole where his shadowy substance should be. He’d been found out, and the ruse was already busted anyway, why not be dramatic about it.

                “Don’t be afraid of me. I was just trying to protect and love you, like he wanted to.” He moved the flashlight away from himself, pointing it back at the wall. He was still clearly transparent, but he had no holes now. Ryan stared at him, an unreadable expression on his face.

                “Like _who_ wanted to?” Ryan asked flatly, the reality of the situation not quite kicking in all the way yet.

                “Shane.” It couldn’t pretend any more. It wasn’t Shane, it never would be. It was just his stupid shadow that the vortex room had brought to life with all of these big feelings.

                “If you’re not Shane, who are you then? And where is he?” Ryan began to pace back and forth in front of the it, running his hands anxiously through his hair. It wanted nothing more than to just go step in front of him and pull his wrists down, tangling its own fingers with his and reassuring him. But he- _it_ wasn’t Shane, it wasn’t its place.

                “I’m no one, and he’s fine. I put him in a room.” It shrugged. It was technically telling the truth, it had no name on its own or any stories to go with it.

                “Take me to him.” Ryan pleaded, the anxiety still palpable in his eyes. It sighed heavily before walking off back down the hallway they’d came from, with Ryan falling into step behind it. A few winding rooms and hallways later, it came to the closed door. It gestured to it, and Ryan opened it with a click, the door creaking slightly as it swung open. He shone his flashlight into the room, finding Shane still knocked out on the floor. Ryan rushed over to him as “Shane” wandered into the room, keeping to the corner closest to the door.

                Ryan sat down next to Shane, picking up his head and placing it into his lap. He pressed his fingers to the side of Shane’s neck, checking for a pulse and almost weeping at the feeling of the steady heartbeat thrumming under his fingers. Ryan looked up to “Shane”, who had dropped all pretense of being actual Shane and reverted to being nothing more than a shadow.

                “Can you wake him up?” Ryan asked him desperately. It nodded before slowly drifting over, placing a shadowy hand on Shane’s face for a moment. It pulled away and slowly began to lose its shape. It’d been out of the vortex room for too long, and the effect of the warping was wearing off. A quiet “thank you” was the last thing it heard before merging back into real Shane’s shadow as he slowly blinked awake.

                “Sha- mmph!” Ryan was halfway through saying Shane’s name when he suddenly surged upwards, pressing his lips against Ryan’s almost desperately. His large hands came up to cup Ryan’s jaw lovingly, pulling him impossibly closer. Ryan didn’t respond for a moment, shocked by the sudden action, but eventually his eyes fell closed and he returned the affection. Shane pulled away, his thumbs stroking along Ryan’s cheekbones.

                “I’m so so _so_ sorry Ryan, I couldn’t do anything about what happened and I was so scared I-” Ryan cut him off with a hand over his mouth and shook his head slightly.

                “It’s okay, your shadow isn’t half bad considering who it came from.” Ryan teased him a little bit with a grin on his face before pulling him in for a hug that was quickly returned.

                While that night at the Rolling Hills Asylum was probably the weirdest either of them had, it was also, by far, the best.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading my fic!
> 
> If you wanna send me a prompt, tag me in stuff, or yell about AUs with me, you can find me on tumblr [ here](http://www.skeptic-septic.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Kudos and comments are much appreciated :)
> 
> Cheers!  
> -Lee


End file.
